i7 8700k Jump to AMD now or wait for DDR5 ram and 30 series prices to settle

[Brutalitous]

so im running i7 8700k, z370 MB Gigabyte (was EVGA but burned out), 32g of DDR4 ram, 2tb NVME sabrent rocket, additional drives as well for lower end processes and storage and RTX 2070 super, so wait or would a upgrade still be worth it now?

[Zando_]

Wait. The 8700K is pretty much the farthest thing from a slouch, unless you just need more cores for rendering or something. 

[Dedayog]

OC your 8700K to 5GHz+ at least.

 

What resolution are you running anyway?

[whm1974]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Wait. The 8700K is pretty much the farthest thing from a slouch, unless you just need more cores for rendering or something. 

Tat is what, 6 or 8 cores and 12 to 16 threads? That is a fairly recent processor with no need to upgrade. I would wait until you see actual major benefits for spending money.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, whm1974 said:

Tat is what, 6 or 8 cores and 12 to 16 threads? That is a fairly recent processor with no need to upgrade. I would wait until you see actual major benefits for spending money.

Yep, 6c/12t. Roughly equivalent to the 10600K when at similar clocks. 

[Brutalitous]

(forget to hit quote button zando sorry) no its not being used for that at this time its using more single core work at moment like gaming and they system would be used as a house/family server if retired but im just thinking about when to upgrade especially with the apparent single core increase in AMD (waiting for independent reviews to confirm ofc) but its more how many years left as my main gaming rig do you think before a over haul?  just with the hint of ram going DDR5 in next year or so and pci-e gen 4 being out. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

4 minutes ago, Brutalitous said:

(forget to hit quote button zando sorry) no its not being used for that at this time its using more single core work at moment like gaming and they system would be used as a house/family server if retired but im just thinking about when to upgrade especially with the apparent single core increase in AMD (waiting for independent reviews to confirm ofc) but its more how many years left as my main gaming rig do you think before a over haul?  just with the hint of ram going DDR5 in next year or so and pci-e gen 4 being out. 

@Zando Bob

[TetraSky]

100% wait. The difference in performance is not big enough to justify an upgrade just yet.

If you were on a 3770k or something, I would've said go ahead, but you're barely 2 or 3 gen out. That's nothing. That CPU came in Q4 of 2017. Meaning it's barely 3 years old.

 

You're better off waiting for DDR5, at least you'll not be buying into a dead platform that will be outdated in a year or two.

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, Brutalitous said:

(forget to hit quote button zando sorry) no its not being used for that at this time its using more single core work at moment like gaming and they system would be used as a house/family server if retired but im just thinking about when to upgrade especially with the apparent single core increase in AMD (waiting for independent reviews to confirm ofc) but its more how many years left as my main gaming rig do you think before a over haul?  just with the hint of ram going DDR5 in next year or so and pci-e gen 4 being out. 

There's really no right answer. CPUs can last ages (I'm running Broadwell-E - first gen 14nm - and could probably do everything I do on my 7 year old Ivy Bridge E chip) unless you're pushing high refresh rates or chasing gains in specific titles. The 8700K will probably stay relevant for a good few years yet, I can't see games suddenly becoming incredibly hard on the CPU. 

 

If you're in the "perfomance/$ is god" camp, you'd wait until you can no longer run games satisfactorily, then buy whatever is the best value at the time. 

If you're in the enthusiast camp, you kinda just buy the hardware if you enjoy messing with it, even if there isn't a huge performance difference (hell I've taken a very noticeable performance loss purely because I enjoyed a specific platform). 

 

You seem to fall somewhere in the middle, caring about both performance/$ but also just the fun of fresh hardware. If you lean more towards performance/$ then wait. If you just want a fresh build, snag a Zen 3 chip if reviews are favorable. It'll likely be 2 years at least until DDR5 is out, affordably priced, and any launch issues are ironed out, so -assuming you can afford to save up more monies - you'll have enough saved by then to buy into a DDR5 platform anyways. 

[whm1974]

So when is DDR5 going to be released? I was under the impression that the Specs are out, but no one is manufacturing this new memory at this time. Maybe they are waiting for higher speeds first?

[Zenith_X1]

8700K is still excellent.  My 6700k is just starting to show age so u have another couple years unless some huge advancement pops up

[Random_Person1234]

5 hours ago, whm1974 said:

So when is DDR5 going to be released? I was under the impression that the Specs are out, but no one is manufacturing this new memory at this time. Maybe they are waiting for higher speeds first?

I think SK Hynix has just started DDR5 production. Zen 4 in late 2021/early 2022 might support DDR5, but we’ll have to wait and see.

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to CPUs, Motherboards and Memory